Excelis Dawns was the first of three adventures which saw the 5th, 6th and 7th Doctors visiting the planet through its development from primitive medieval backwater to decaying industrialism. (There is also a Bernice Summerfield adventure set post-apocalypse). Their adventures centred on the city of Excelis and here, in Excelis Dawns, Excelis is a small village clinging to the side of a Mount Excelis, with a convent of decidedly single-minded nuns looming over it from the peak.

This medieval flavoured story is full of the requisite tropes and clichés.

There is a warlord (Grayvorn, played with relish by Anthony Head), ramshackle villages and peasants, religious relics, markets, festivals, a convent full of nuns, harsh environments (a mountain, a swamp and a dense forest) and, central to the plot, a quest. All this lends the tale a familiar air.

Apart from the specific Excelis aspects, this story could very well have happened on Earth, as clichéd as many of its aspects are. The vague back story that civilisation on Artaris has already risen and fallen many times before our first visit separates it a little from the history of our Earth, but very little of this idea is explained or explored.

Thrown into this world is the Doctor (on his way back from dropping the Gravis off on an uninhabited planet – meaning this adventure happens partway through Part 4 of Frontios with Tegan sulking in the TARDIS and Turlough stranded at the edge of time until they return for him). Alongside him he has the questionable presence of one Iris Wildthyme – transtemporal adventuress and cabaret singer.

I love Iris and, in particular, Katy Manning’s version of the old soak. The Big Finish mini series of Iris Wildthyme adventures are hilarious and it’s a shame this story is so early in her Big Finish career as we don’t have the benefit of David Benson’s sublime Panda. I can only imagine what this story would have been like with Panda’s dry wit accompanying the Doctor, Iris, Grayvorn and Sister Jolene on the quest for the relic of Artaris. His reaction alone that the relic is Iris’ lost gold lame handbag would be priceless.

I am aware that Iris as a character is one of the more ‘marmite’ aspects of Doctor Who outside of the television series, but I think she is a fun foil for the Doctor and throws his attitude to time and space travel in to sharp relief. In this adventure, specifically, her lackadaisical approach to time travel draws out of the Doctor the fact he has lost the frivolous attitude of his previous incarnation, due to the death of Adric.

But it is Iris’s twisted versions of the Doctor’s own adventures which always bring a smile – in this adventure we hear of the time seven of her incarnations were dragged to the Death Zone on Gallifrey by Morbius and forced to fight Mechonoids, Voord and Zarbi. As Iris puts it – all the rubbish monsters!

The rest of the cast are entertaining and Anthony Head seems to be having fun as the gruff, but surprisingly accepting, Lord Grayvorn. Posy Miller’s Sister Jolene is an oddly modern sounding nun who ends the play with her motives and ultimate fate left hanging (her story is followed up in the Bernice Summerfield section of the ‘trilogy in four parts’). Indeed, the end of the story sees the Mother Superior and Grayvorn merged – a thread which is followed up on in the later Excelis audios.

The only aspect which falls a bit flat for me are the zombies guarding the relic. The Zombie King with his ‘beloved’ schtick reminds me too much of Gollum and his precious and the fact that the zombies are never really explained is unsatisfying in a series which usually doesn’t embrace supernatural elements at least without explaining them away with a little bit of cod science – whether it be vampires, ghosts or werewolves.

I do however, look forward to our next trip back to Excelis.